Die houding van Afrikaansonderwysers in Mamelodi teenoor Afrikaans

Abstract:

A new political dispensation for South Africa is likely to affect the status of the two official languages. Up to now the official status of Afrikaans has been protected by law but a new government could change the status of Afrikaans, as was the case in Namibia. A controversy has arisen among various Afrikaans authors and academics whether the status of Afrikaans as an official language should be protected by law or not. If Afrikaans were to lose its status as an official language, it is felt that it would suffer in the long term as non-mother tongue speakers of Afrikaans in particular would feel no need to learn Afrikaans at school. This would eventually also affect Afrikaans as an important lingua franca in South Africa. From a sociolinguistic point of view, language planning depends among other things, on the determination of the attitudes of people towards particular languages. The purpose of this study is to determine the attitude of black Afrikaans teachers at secondary schools in Mamelodi towards Afrikaans as a language and Afrikaans as a subject at school and also their attitude towards white mother-tongue speakers of Af rikaans. Their attitudes would naturally influence the attitudes of their pupils. The questionnaire method was used as research in language planning established this as the most effective way of determining language attitudes. The results show a predominantly positive attitude towards Afrikaans as a language and a subject and also towards mother-tongue speakers of Afrikaans. Among the recommendations arising from the findings are these: - that further research is to be carried out among teachers in areas where Afrikaans is not the dominant language; - that Afrikaans should remain as an official language as it is an important means of communication for black people; - that the Afrikaans media should be made more accessible to black people; - that Afrikaans should remain a compulsory subject at least until the end of the Junior Secondary Phase: that the creative writing component in the Afrikaans syllabus should be adapted to make this component easier for teachers to handle and to ensure that language is taught communicatively: and - that Afrikaans cultural organizations should open their doors to the black communities in order to ensure more effective inter-cultural contact.